The Eight Stupidest Things Sports Fans Love to Say

1. "He doesn't care enough"

Yes, the major professional leagues are brimming with supremely talented individuals who blow their potential because they don't work hard. JaMarcus Russell, for example, might never start another NFL game. That said, there are pro athletes—very successful ones—who take endless jabs from fans because it looks as if they aren't trying, when in fact they're so gifted that they make the game look easy. Like JD Drew, an elite right fielder who's despised by fans in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta, Los Angeles and now Boston. If only he slammed his helmet after every strikeout, or dove for balls instead of making effortless catches. Randy Moss has uncared his way to an inevitable spot in the Hall of Fame. The hilarious presumption here is that, just by watching on our television, we know what players are thinking, how much they do or do not care, and whether they really too hurt to play.

JD Drew making a catch in the outfield

Photo: Getty Images

2. "The Commissioner is out to get us"

The [pick one: MLB / NFL / NBA / NHL / MLS / PGA / ATP / FIFA] commissioner is a power-mad, money-hungry dictator who spends his nights contemplating which teams should be screwed over and which should succeed. Right? He assigns carefully chosen officials to specific games in order to ensure the preordained outcome. He manipulates the league's rules in order to shape his sport as he sees fit, stacking the deck for his sport's superstars. So then… why is it that LeBron James has zero championships and a boring, small market, guaranteed-low- ratings-delivering snore-chise like San Antonio has four titles in the last eleven years? Why does Alex Ovechkin get bounced from the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs while teams that play in North Carolina and central Florida have won in recent years? Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, teams win fair and square?

Kobe Bryant with David Stern

Photo: Getty Images

3. "The refs must have money on the game"

Referees were easy targets long before Tim Donaghy bet on basketball. Any call that goes against a fan's team is, ipso facto, a bad call. Fans vacillate between imploring the refs to "let them play" or "call it even" or "BLOW THE DAMN WHISTLE!" depending on which plots the most favorable course for their team. In other words, referees can't win as long as one team must lose. What fans completely ignore, and what they need to realize, is the fact that referees in all sports have incredibly difficult jobs. Honestly, what makes more sense? That officials of fast-paced, pressure-filled games occasionally blow calls that flummox the rest of us even in super-slo-mo, or that they're using their access for some malevolent purpose?

Tim Donaghy

Photo: Getty Images

4. "We need a new coach"

Fans aren't always wrong about this. Sometimes a coach just isn't ready for the big-time, or players have tuned him out. Every little mistake, however, is not grounds for a firing, especially when the mistakes are typically made by the players. If a team is not hitting or pitching well, or an NBA squad is missing shots, or a QB sneak doesn't work on 4th and inches—these things can and do build up into a strong case against a coach's ability. But sometimes it's just an illustration that sports are weird. And any world in which fans wanted Joe Torre out of a job is a fantasy. Not because he's a great manager, but because it is was crystal clear in his final Yankee years that he was working with a pitching staff destined for postseason failure. Some coaches deserve to be fired (sorry Herm Edwards) but a lot of them are just the fall guy when players don't perform or the GM builds a lousy team.

Joe Torre

Photo: Getty Images

5. "The coach should give that guy a chance"

When things aren't going well, fans will suggest anything to turn it around. When the regulars aren't getting it done, memories drift back to preseason—that magical time during which scrubs shine against other scrubs in a small sample of games that don't count. Which is the only reason they're playing. Why? Because they aren't good. Yet fans constantly presume that the devil they know is worse than the scrub they don't. Look, it's a fan's right to claim to know better than the coach—even though the coach is usually a guy who has spent a lifetime mastering the game, played it professionally, and sees his players every day in practice. If coaches made every personnel shift that fans demanded, every team in professional sports would be filled with floppy prospects and career backups, and then the fans would start shouting for the coach to be fired.

Adam Morrison

Photo: Getty Images

6. "He plays the game the right way"

Do you try really, really hard at all times, and make sure everyone knows you're trying hard? Do you have a sub .300 on-base percentage and drop down timely bunts but still get thrown out by inches? Do you average less than 10 ppg, dive for every loose ball and throw it off an opponent before falling out of bounds in order to retain possession? Congratulations, you Play The Game The Right Way. Examples of things that won't earn you such praise: hitting piles of home runs, scoring lots of points, and gaining lots of yards. You know, the stuff that wins games the other 99 percent of the time. Just watch Nick Punto—bunting, diving and light-hitting extraordinaire. Nobody has ever played any game more rightly than Nick Punto plays baseball. By the way, Nick Punto sucks.

Nick Punto

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7. "The game isn't what it used to be"

Your father loves this one. There's a tendency among ex-pros and the men who watched them play to hold the younger generations responsible for the steady degradation of sports in America. Their reasons abound. Back in the day, players used to hit harder, play smarter, and dress classier. Nobody would even think of asking to leave a game due to an injury. Football games were dirtier and meaner. Right, pops, it's weird the way teams actually care about keeping their players healthy and protecting their investments. Best of all? "Back in the day, they did it the right way. They did it clean." Sure, no one took amphetamines in the '50s and '60s. And Mickey Mantle didn't piss away countless games in the second half of his career by drinking too much. Never happened.

Joe DiMaggio

Photo: Getty Images

8. "Our star player isn't a winner"

Alex Rodriguez, Kevin Garnett, David Robinson, Peyton Manning, John Elway: for most of their careers, they were superstar losers. Playoff flops. Anti-clutch. That is, until, all of a sudden, they weren't. Did anything change about their character? Of course not. They just went from being superstars on flawed, mediocre teams to superstars on deep, outstanding teams. This might be the greatest fan fallacy of them all: that a star athlete's failure to win a title is a manifestation of his thin character and not a simple matter of, ya know, bad luck. No single player in any major team sport has ever won a championship alone. A-Rod went from choker to postseason hero as soon as the Yankees finally put together a World Series caliber starting rotation. Manning won a Super Bowl once the Colts finally built a defense that didn't make opponents look as explosive as, well, Manning's offense. John Elway nearly retired ringless. He stuck around long enough for Terrell Davis to come along. Dan Marino stuck around even longer, but his Terrell never showed. And as for Patrick Ewing— hey, you try winning a NBA title when your team's second best player is John Starks. Not gonna happen, no matter who you are.

The Eight Stupidest Things Sports Fans Love to Say

You hear them at the stadium. On sports-talk radio. On TV. You've probably said a few of them yourself. Fans keep using these inane fallacies because they us help make sense of mysterious games. Mostly, though, they just make us sound dumb.

Yes, the major professional leagues are brimming with supremely talented individuals who blow their potential because they don't work hard. JaMarcus Russell, for example, might never start another NFL game. That said, there are pro athletes—very successful ones—who take endless jabs from fans because it looks as if they aren't trying, when in fact they're so gifted that they make the game look easy. Like JD Drew, an elite right fielder who's despised by fans in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta, Los Angeles and now Boston. If only he slammed his helmet after every strikeout, or dove for balls instead of making effortless catches. Randy Moss has uncared his way to an inevitable spot in the Hall of Fame. The hilarious presumption here is that, just by watching on our television, we know what players are thinking, how much they do or do not care, and whether they really too hurt to play.